Special court to hear Satyam case

Earlier, CBI had written to the govt, requesting a special court to ensure speedy trial.

A special court will be set up in Hyderabad soon to try the Satyam Computer Services case. It will be headed by an additional chief metropolitan magistrate.

A decision to this effect was taken on Thursday at a cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister K Rosaiah. “The cabinet has approved the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) request, as well as the High Court recommendation,” a minister said after the meeting.

CBI, which took over the investigations of the multi-crore scandal in February this year, had earlier written to the government, requesting a special court to ensure speedy trial.

The Andhra Pradesh High Court, too, had recommended to the state government to consider a special court for the Satyam case, as the metropolitan magistrate and additional chief metropolitan magistrate courts had to deal with many other cases.

Satyam founder B Ramalinga Raju was arrested on January 7 after he confessed to inflating the balance sheet figures. CBI filed a chargesheet against Raju and other accused before the XIV additional chief metropolitan magistrate court on April 7. It is in the process of filing a second chargesheet shortly.

CBI said there were 433 witnesses, 1,532 documents and 62 material objects in the case. The initial chargesheet ran into 65,000 pages.

A division bench of the High Court had, three days ago, reserved orders on the CBI petition seeking permission to conduct a lie detector (polygraph) and F300 test (brain mapping) on Raju, former managing director Rama Raju and former chief financial officer Srinivas Vadlamani.

Raju is being treated at Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences since September, when he complained of chest pains.

On Wednesday, the high court dismissed the bail petition of Price Waterhouse auditor Srinivas Talluri, arrested on charges of conniving with Raju and other aides. The judge asked CBI to frame the charges against the accused in a month and begin the trial in two months, failing which, the accused would be eligible to renew their bail pleas.